Looking back over my last post, I noticed that it seemed very self-centered. It was all about self-improvement. Sometimes I feel guilty thinking like that, but when I think about helping other people I feel weak and useless. The point of getting stronger, living a better life, is not for your own satisfaction. Well, not entirely. It's so you can support others. I want to try and live better and be more productive and eventually make more money not for my own needs. I want to cease being a burden on other people and instead support them.
I have a friend who likes to ask me hard questions. How do you feel about giving? What do you do when your friends think they know what's best for you (and don't)? What's keeping you from working on the thing you really enjoy working on? I love those questions. I hate the way I stammer and pause and often times give up on an answer, but those questions stay with me and force me to answer them however long they take.
I surprised myself at how hard it was for me to answer the question about giving. Of course I want to give to people in need, but what about my family, my friends who also have needs, and my own well-being. Am I willing to sacrifice those to a stranger for the sake of "giving"? Should I give to someone who "appears" to be in need only to have my hard-earned money swindled from me? How do I know that they will wisely invest my gift in their life and not simply waste it on petty desires or addictions? I still don't have all the answers and the question still nags at me.
"Money isn't everything." My mother said that to me recently when I was worried about my own financial situation. My mother's advice is correct 100% of the time. It's eerie, it's frustrating, and I rarely believe it despite the insurmountable evidence. Getting money, having money, doing the right thing with money are all important, but they aren't nearly as important as how you act toward other people and how you feel about yourself.
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